


I Will Break Under the Weight of My Own Choices (Then Pick Myself Up Again)

by Chill_with_Penguins



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: BAMF Felicity Smoak, Gen, I Don't Even Know, Not Beta Read, Oops, Post-Season/Series 06, Strong Female Characters, We Die Like Men, arrow treats felicity like a cardboard cutout and she deserves BETTER, helix - Freeform, literally just a rant, sorry - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-02
Updated: 2020-02-02
Packaged: 2021-02-27 19:08:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22530730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chill_with_Penguins/pseuds/Chill_with_Penguins
Summary: Don’t do this, they had said. You’ve always been the best of us. Don’t go dark like this.And him, always him: I didn’t want you to be like me.But here’s the thing: Felicity Smoak knew darkness long before her life was about late nights fighting crime in leather costumes.---Alternatively: yes, it's another rant.(Let's be real, no one's surprised.)
Relationships: Felicity Smoak & Being Self-Confident
Comments: 1
Kudos: 23





	I Will Break Under the Weight of My Own Choices (Then Pick Myself Up Again)

**Author's Note:**

> hahahahahahaha so guys funny story. I was at work procrastinating writing a paper for my history class and went digging through my old google drive fics and found... whatever this is? It's very short and of dubious quality but just in case anyone else was equally irritated with the fucking mess that is season 6 (or.... really any of Arrow? I mean I love it but let's be real guys it's not GOOD) I figured I'd post this anyways. Should I be working on schoolwork or any of the thirteen open, half-finished projects I'm supposed to finish writing instead? You betcha. But I am a catastrophe in human form, so instead you get this. Sorry :( 
> 
> If anyone has any good BAMF Felicity Smoak fics, let me know! I'm always looking for new stories to read.

_Don’t do this_ , they had said. _You’ve always been the best of us. Don’t go dark like this._

And him, always him:  _ I didn’t want you to be like me _ .

But here’s the thing: Felicity Smoak knew darkness long before her life was about late nights fighting crime in leather costumes.

*

When she met with Alena for the first time, something in her sang in recognition. She had been aching with loneliness since Billy, since Oliver, since her father took that bullet for her.

(She hadn’t felt like herself in years, not since she dyed her hair blond and threw out her clothes and got to work, if she’s being honest.)

(She’s not.)

And then, suddenly: another bright, babbling tech girl, one who was inspired by her, by  _ what she did _ , to try and make the world a better place.

You don’t get to choose your legacy, but sometimes, you get to pick what to do with it. So Felicity walked in Helix with her arms open, but also her eyes and ears and mind. So she decided to stop hiding what she had always been, deep down: someone who wanted to save the world, and damn every person or government agency or firewall that got in her way. So she chose.

She  _ chose _ .

*

When she’s in the bunker, being yelled at on all sides, being told that she is Good and that this is not her, she remembers that ghost that had haunted her right after the accident. She’d been high as fuck on pain meds, yeah, and it  _ was  _ a hallucination, but that doesn’t mean it was wrong.

She looks at Oliver, who keeps talking about how he doesn’t want her to turn out like him, and Diggle, who still seems convinced that this is just a temporary loss of insanity on her part. She remembers being 18, staring in the mirror and seeing darkness staring back. She remembers how it felt to rely on nothing but her own two hands, her mind, her talent–how it felt to use those things to change the world. How she kept doing favors for that strange, back-from-the-dead party boy so many years ago because it was as close as she trusted herself to get to her old life.

She thinks:  _ I am nothing that you created. _

*

Can we talk about Felicity Smoak? I mean really talk, looking at all she is and all she could be, if she was more than just the prop the show makers used to give Oliver support or contrast, whatever the story calls for.

I mean this: that Felicity Smoak wrote a virus that changed the world before she graduated college. That she found a strange man bleeding out in her back seat and even though she was clearly frightened, she did what he asked and saved his life. That she never wanted to be an executive assistant, or a vice president, or a CEO, but she did everything that was asked of her and more.

Felicity Smoak gave a presentation on revolutionary technology from a wheelchair, even though her board advised her otherwise.

She worked in the field and protected herself and her mother and lead the way in technological breakthroughs that we barely even paused to acknowledge. She is an extraordinary woman, and still, after all that, after all the times she saved the team and all the decisions she had to make in those splintered, terrifying seconds, they have the gall to stand there and say that she is in over her head.

This is Felicity Smoak, working with a group of hackers. She knows exactly what she’s getting into.

*

Oliver talks about his darkness, about making hard choices, about not wanting her to become like him. And Felicity thinks:  _ what about Havenrock? _

She may not have snapped anyone’s neck, but she’s killed tens of thousands of people. More, if you count all the people who were probably killed by Cooper, if you tally up everyone caught in the crossfire, everyone who got hurt or killed because someone was targeting her for one reason or another.

She stands there on her own two feet, because she walked into this bunker, into this life. What Oliver doesn’t understand (even though he should, the hypocrite) is that even if she wanted to, that isn’t a choice she gets to unmake. It wouldn’t matter if she decided to back out like Thea, or even to move across the country and change her name–she’s in this, now. The second she saw someone who needed her help, she’d be right back behind a keyboard, finding back doors and information and security codes to help.

*

Felicity is not a damsel in distress. She is not a woman going dark who needs to be saved from herself. She is not even a woman who isn’t thinking straight through all the grief; Felicity grew up without a father and had her first love commit suicide before she was even 20, she  _ knows _ grief.

She is just a woman, making choices, sometimes making mistakes, choosing what her life will be.


End file.
